This book investigates the factors that shape India's foreign policy and its evolving approach to global governance. The authors, Amrita Narlikar, Johannes Plagemann, and Sandra Destradi, utilize a structured analytical framework to evaluate how ideas, interests, and institutions influence India's behavior on the international stage. By examining these variables, the text seeks to explain why India exhibits varying levels of compliance with and influence over global regimes across multiple policy domains.

Experts recognize this work as a rigorous contribution to the study of Indian foreign policy and international relations theory. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose and the systematic application of the authors' analytical framework to complex geopolitical issues.